I know of one US patent which was issued to Morel Mountain several
years ago (1992?). Paul Stamets in Growing Gourmet and Medicinal
Mushrooms and The Mushroom Cultivator has additional information on
morel cultivation both indoors and outdoors.
My sole success at morel cultivation has been completely outdoors. It
has not been patented. The method is simple, but not available for many
people. I chipped fresh green Douglas-fir branches (Pseudotsuga
menziesii) into 3-inch deep beds, inoculated with a slurry made of
water and dried morels which had been stored away from direct sunlight.
(Nancy Smith Weber has said that she has gotten nearly 100% germination
from morels spores dried for 1 year, when stored away from direct
light.)
Fruiting can occur a considerable distance away from where inoculation
takes place, and is very sensitive to water availability. In my
experience, fruiting took place nearly 60 feet distant from the
original inoculation, and may have been initiated by draining a large
shiitake-log soaktank, containing about 500 gallons of water. Fruiting
normally is from mid-April to late May in our area, depending on slope,
elevation and temperature. But in this case, fruiting took place at
1000 foot elevation in mid-March on a mostly north-facing slope.
While the sporocarps were large (and delicious), the yield was
underwhelming. Approximately 2 cubic yards of chipped branches yielded
only 1.5 pounds of morels.
Daniel B. Wheeler